


La Vie Éternalle

by dogtit



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Second POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7586362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogtit/pseuds/dogtit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, how Widowmaker got her edgy tattoos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Vie Éternalle

**Author's Note:**

> yet another kink meme fill bcuz i thought the request was rly cute !!! anyway!!! heres something not soaking in sin

It’s been a long day for you.

It’s almost midnight and you should have closed up shop hours ago, but there’s a very giggly group of girls with consent forms all signed and pictures of butterflies or snowflakes or whatever and they all just want the lines done. Nothing too big, you figure. You can have them prepped, inked, and out in two hours. You own the shop and you own your own time. Camille is working the shop with you too, but she’s not making a fuss. She likes watching you work, and you let her work a needle too every now and again when someone has a boring design. 

That’s the real hook of the job. Working with art. People bring in masterpieces and you get to paint them into their skin with needle and ink. You’re not the best, not yet, but you’ve gotten stellar reviews across the board, which is why you’re even here so late. 

Camille leads the first little bean to your chair, looking over the design. A geometric, honeycomb design, something printed out off of the internet; the girl, Chloé, doesn’t waste your time with a soliloquy of self importance. She says that she likes bees, and thinks it would look good on her shoulder. You give the austere cut of her figure a once over, nod, and agree. You don’t add that you think it’s rather boring. You just get her all set, tell her to breathe, and fire up the needle.

She cries about twenty minutes in, but breathes slow and steady. Her face is flushed beet red from the effort of holding back her sobs and she’s covered in sweat by the time you finish the solid black outlines. You ask her if she wants it filled with a different color. She politely, and hastily, declines. The two other girls fold up their butterfly and their ladybug designs in their pockets and add that they’ve changed their minds, it’s late after all. 

Chloé pays you about 75 euros--more than you’d charge her, but she says that it’s a tip--and the three of them stumble out of your shop. Camille asks if you want to close up; you’re about to flip the sign when a hulking mass of black leather opens the door. 

Camille goes silent as death, her hands already moving for the silent alarm to trigger it. You shake your head no. You’ve spent a while on the streets, getting blood on your hands and cash in your pocket; you know danger when you see it. And while this guy _does_ make you want to run in the opposite direction, makes every cell in your body shriek with horror, your gut says that he’s not here to kill you. Not yet. Hard to tell what he’s feeling when he’s got a mask on. 

The guy turns his head back and forth, observing pictures and prints of your work. His massive arms cross over his equally huge chest. A sound rattles in his throat like a brick in a washing machine; it makes you shudder to the very core of your soul. It takes a minute to realize that it’s a sound of appraisal. The monster steps back and opens the door, growling, “This will do. Get in here.”

Camille opens her mouth to say that you’re closed. You shake your head again harder this time. 

A woman walks in, almost as weird as her escort. She’s tall and built like a ballerina, powerful legs and a slender waist. Every shift of her form reveals hard ropes of muscle slinking beneath her skin. She’s got an aristocrat’s face, and you awkwardly wipe your sweating palms against your jeans. Lady hasn’t even looked your way, and you feel like an insect. 

She’s as beautiful as she is terrifying, from the black hair tied back in a severe ponytail to the bottoms of her metal boots, though you don’t have a thing for blue women. She’s just as much a piece of work as Masked Biker Daddy brooding in the corner; a skintight purple bodysuit that leaves nothing to the imagination, and a metal helmet. 

She too casts a look at the artwork on your walls. No emotion flitters through her amber eyes and she remains expressionless. If she’s impressed, you can’t tell. If she’s not, again, you can’t tell. Trust the blue chick to be an ice queen.

“So,” you say after a moment, making Camille jump. “What can I do for you two?” 

Masked Biker Daddy looms by Lady Blue’s side. He reaches into his black jacket--you spy guns clipped to his belt, and swallow back a knot of fear in your throat--and withdraws two sheets of paper. He lays them out on your counter and drums his fingers; his gloves are tipped with claws. You wonder if there’s a convention of sorts in your city that you just haven’t heard about. 

“She wants these,” Biker Daddy says. 

You look at the papers. On one is a fancy looking design of a spider, crisp black legs and a vicious red hourglass sitting in the abdomen. The other is the words _araignée du soir, cauchemar_ held in a spider’s web. You blink rapidly, then look up to the both of them. There’s an awkward moment where the _really?_ goes unsaid between the three of you. Biker Daddy glowers down. Spiderwoman in Blue just stares straight ahead. Camille wheezes in the corner. 

“Nice,” is what you manage first. You tap your finger on the spider, addressing the woman. “Where do you want this one, ma’am?”

She blinks slow. “On my back,” she says, her voice softer and higher than you had expected. 

“How big?”

Spiderwoman in Blue makes a thoughtful hum, makes an approximation of size. “I want it to almost cover my whole back,” she says. “Filled in.” 

“Alright. Camille, blow this up for me?” You hand the spider to Camille, who practically lunges into the back to get to work. “How about the other?” 

She holds up her right arm, indicating the elbow down to her wrist. “Wrapped around. I want _cauchemar_ to sit on the inside of my arm.”

“You got it. Filled in too?”

“ _Oui._ ”

“I’m not gonna lie,” you say, “this could take a while and there’s gonna be a fair amount of pain. If you want, we can do this in two sess--”

“You will finish this tonight,” Biker Daddy grates. 

“This pain will be nothing,” Spiderwoman in Blue replies frostily.

Yikes. You’d take them more seriously if they weren’t dressed like they just stumbled out of a Halloween store. “...Well, you’re the boss here.” You grab a clipboard, print out the forms necessary for legal purposes, and hand it over. “Just fill this out for me while I prep my station, alright?”

They both stare at the clipboard, then at you. The sheer menace rolling off the both of them makes your heart seize briefly, before you breathe through it. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Spiderwoman says.

“You don’t fill out those forms, I don’t ink you.” You cross your arms. 

She blinks again, face infuriatingly blank. 

“You don’t have to include any legal names,” you finally concede. “Just give me enough that I don’t get in trouble.”

You offer her a pen. She takes it and the clipboard and takes a seat in one of the squeaking only chairs. Biker Daddy thumps his way around the waiting area, pacing. You go into the back to get the finished product. 

“Oh my god,” Camille whispers when you walk through the door. “Oh my _god?_ Are we being mugged by cosplayers?”

“Eh,” you say. “You see weirder things.”

“Weirder than a blue lady and an 80’s comic book villain?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” You grab the enlarged designs. “Just breathe. They’re probably just really dedicated to their characters.” 

Camille shakes her head and moves to get your station ready. You walk back to the front and see Spiderwoman and Biker Daddy standing, waiting. Spiderwoman in Blue hands you the clipboard, and you scan it over. Apparently her real name’s Widowmaker. Neat. No history of epilepsy or blood related sicknesses, and she’s clean. You set the forms aside to file later and the three of you march to the back. 

Camille squeezes herself into a corner. Biker Daddy sits on an offered chair, the seat squeaking in protest from his bulk. Widowmaker sits primly in the tattoo chair, hands in her lap. 

“Which one do you want first? Back, or arm?”

She considers it for a moment, and answers, “The back first, _s’il vous plaît._ ”

“Got it.” You adjust the chair, letting her lay on her front. The bodysuit leaves it open in the back, which is convenient for you. You awkwardly sweep away the waterfall of black hair over her shoulder, start tracing the design on her back. When it’s done, you ask her to sit up and check the size and look of it. 

Widowmaker stares at the spider’s reflection in the mirror, and you sense there’s a smile happening somewhere. “This is exactly what I want. You may begin.”

You snap on your gloves, load up your ink, and go to work. Credit where credit’s due, she doesn’t even flinch. You nearly do, because touching her skin is like touching a corpse with how cold it is. Your hand remains steady, though. 

“Got that spider aesthetic thing working for you, huh?” Smalltalk isn’t usually your thing, but Camille will have a heart attack if you don’t start powerdrilling all this ice. “What’s the draw?”

Widowmaker remains silent for several heartbeats, before she says, “When I was a girl, I had a fear of spiders.”

“Oh. So this is like recl--”

“I was told they felt no emotion,” Widowmaker continues, interrupting you completely. “That their hearts never beat. But I...know the truth.” 

Has she...rehearsed this? You chance a glance to Biker Daddy and see him with his face--mask?--in his hands, body language reading exasperated. Definitely rehearsed. This is a little embarrassing. 

“That seems a little silly,” Camille says. “Of course spiders’ hearts beat. Like. Okay, so here’s the thing about spiders, they don’t have a typical circulatory system like we do, it’s more like an open circulatory system. It doesn’t even pump blood, it pumps haemolymph which is sort of like blood but also not--”

Widowmaker makes a huff through her nose, and you watch her tune it out. She might be pouting a little bit. 

An hour and a half later you’ve got the spider done, already starting to tape it up to let it start healing. Camille won’t stop talking about spiders now. Biker Daddy’s hands keep twitching like he’s going to strangle her and honestly, you’re sort of thinking that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Widowmaker’s face is blank when she sits up, but her eye twitches every now and then; a reflex of being exposed to Camille when she has the chance to spit out ‘sick wikipedia knowledge’. 

You and Widowmaker share a look. Somehow, it is the same exasperated exhaustion. 

“You have one of those too?” You gesture with a nod to Camille, who is now sitting beside Biker Daddy. She’s moved on from spiders to airplanes. How? God, hell if you know. 

“Yes,” Widowmaker says, and that’s it as she brings up her arm. You make her drink a couple glasses of water and take a breather, and send Camille away on an errand to get snacks. She returns with a box of beignets and four coffees. The four of you eat in a really strange sort of silence. Biker Daddy compliments the dark roast. Widowmaker wipes powdered sugar all over his jacket.

The second edgy tattoo is done in two more hours, the font giving you more trouble than you thought. When it’s done Widowmaker looks more tired than she did coming in, and you her and Biker Daddy take the rest of the beignets. Biker Daddy pays you over a thousand in euros; it’s way too much, and you’re a little wary because who knows how he got the cash, but they’re already walking out the door. 

“See you!” Camille waves. The door slams shut. You lock it, flip the sign. “Aw, man. They were real nice, weren’t they?”

You look at Camille. She looks at you. You both proceed to burst into laughter. You wonder if you’ll ever see such crazy customers like that again. 

(You do, in fact, when some months later Widowmaker and Biker Daddy walk back in and tell you that you’re now the official tattoo artist of Talon. No, you don’t have to fight. Yes, you can still keep your day job. Yes, you will be paid extra. Yes, you are going to be giving people a lot of matching tattoos Death Eater style.)


End file.
